Earning Bitcoins and More | The Best Ways to Earn Digital Currency

Many people believe that digital currency is the future of money, and even amongst those who don't there is a growing realization that there will be a long term place for these virtual coins to use when paying for things over the internet or transferring money to people in other countries.

There are a range of benefits to using Bitcoin and other digital currencies. The fact that they offer lower transaction fees for merchants in comparison to credit cards or Paypal means that some stores are willing to pass the savings on to customers in the form of discounts. You can transfer money to anybody, anywhere in the world without paying the high prices associated with international bank transfers or traditional money transfer services. You can also have complete control over your money, storing it on your own computer or phone rather than having to trust a bank or other financial organisation (no fear of failing banks, or Cyprus style 'bank levies' forcing you to pay for the mistakes of highly paid bankers).

If you believe that a digital currency will grow in popularity, owning it might also be seen as a good investment. This is because the supply of these currencies is limited, usually with a fixed maximum which can ever be created, so if demand grows due to more people wanting to use the currency, then its value will rise. In fact, lost coins and small transaction fees mean that many people expect the value to rise over the long term even if the number of users remain level - this means that just like regular money is 'inflationary', losing some of its value each year as prices continue to rise, digital currency is seen as 'deflationary', gaining value every year instead,

But not everybody has the money to purchase the Bitcoins or other digital currencies that they would like to own. Even if you do have the money you might not want to risk it on such a new technology. One way around this is to earn your coins, rather than buying them. Fortunately there are now loads of different ways to earn digital currency - earning Bitcoins has never been easier!

Earn Bitcoins for Playing Games

One of the most interesting ways to earn cryptocurrency coins is through in-game economies and video games rewards.

Video games and cryptocurrency seem to be a perfect fit - many games have had their own virtual currencies and tradable in-game items for years (think World of Warcraft gold, for example). Games developers are just starting to capitalize on this with by producing games in which you can compete against other players or unlock acheivements to earn Bitcoins.

You won't get rich in this way, but you can have some fun and get your first step into cryptocurrency with enough bitcoin to play with and 'try before you buy'.

Earn Bitcoins from Your Regular Job

You don't necessarily need to do anything different to what you are doing now in order to start earning Bitcoins. Various services have started popping up which allow employees to start getting their wages in digital rather than fiat currency. I've listed a couple of notable examples below, or just ask your boss!

Get Paid In Bitcoin: This Australian company will take receipt of your regular wages and convert as much or as little as you want in Bitcoin,

Mining

Digital currencies like Bitcoin were designed to be earned by people who run the software which runs the network on their computer(s). This allows these coins to have a 'decentralized' organization, in which the infrastructure is run by users themselves rather than a central authority, and allows for a fairer and more constructive distribution of newly created currency units compared to giving them to banks to be introduced to the economy as debt - which is the method used by fiat currency. The process of running this software and being rewarded with newly generated coins is called 'mining'.

In the early days of Bitcoin this was done by people running the software on home computers. Today this has become uneconomical, as competition from people using specialist hardware means that you would spend more on electricity running a regular computer than you would get back from the generated coins. But that doesn't mean you can't get involved in mining if you are interested. You can pick up specialist mining hardware quite easily, the cheapest of which comes in the form of a small USB stick that you just need to plug in to a computer running the mining software. If you like playing with new gadgets, tweaking settings and figuring out how things work, then mining can be an enjoyable hobby as well as a way to earn a little extra pocket money in the form of digital currency.

Check out the eBay capsule to the right for an example of a low cost USB miner.

Alternatively, if you don't fancy having to set up the hardware yourself, pay for the electricity, and probably not get your money back for ages (if ever - as it depends on the price of Bitcoin which fluctuates quite a lot still) then you can give 'cloud mining' a try instead. Cloud mining basically means that you a share in a miner which is being run by a professional, allowing you to share in the financial advantages that come from economies of scale and also meaning that you don't have any of the hassle of actually running the hardware yourself.

Earning Bitcoins for Microjobs

There are loads of websites out there now which allow you to earn a small amount of Bitcoin for performing various tasks. This may include watching videos, visiting sponsor's websites, minor admin tasks, completing surveys, or taking up various partner offers.

I've also included revenue sharing websites which let you earn a small amount for doing things like posting pictures on an image sharing site, or publishing code snippets or other text, in this category. Check out the link list below!

BitcoinGetEarn Bitcoins for completing small simple jobs or for watching videos.

I Want Free BitcoinsGet paid for completing survey and partner offers. Includes a referral program which pays 25%.

BitImgAn image hosting site which shares its ad revenue with users in BTC.

Find Real Jobs Paying in Bitcoins

If you are looking for a way to earn a bit more than the few pennies worth of digital currency you are likely to get from paid to surf programs or for completing surveys and offers, then you may want to check out one of the specialist jobs boards which have started to pop up. There are now quite a few companies out there looking for regular full time and part time employees who want to be paid in BTC. Many of these jobs will involve working for companies involved in digital currency in some way, but there are also other companies as well. There are lots of programming jobs and quite a few marketing jobs, but there are all sorts of other things too, so no matter what your profession is you may well be able to find an employer happy to pay you in Bitcoin.

Although I haven't actually tried to get a job like this, the one that looks the best to me is Coinality - they have lots of jobs covering a wide range of different positions and types of company, and the website is well designed and user-friendly.

There are also plenty of places to find businesses looking for temporary and freelance workers. Again you will find lots of technology jobs, especially companies looking for programmers, but there are also quite a few writing and marketing jobs, some translation work, and other stuff too. One of the most well-established sites for freelancers who want to get paid in BTC is BitTask.

Source

Faucets - Get Digital Currencies for Free

On the other hand, perhaps you don't actually want to do any work - you actually just want to get your hands on some Bitcoin or other digital currency for free. Well don't worry - there are plenty of sites out there for you too!

You won't get a lot of money like this. In fact you'll get a really tiny amount. But there are loads of different websites that will let you claim a small amount of a digital currency every hour or day just for visiting the website. These sites make money from advertising to people visiting them to get their free coins, and they also get donations to replenish their funds. This is because digital currencies need users, so people with a vested interest in a currency (miners, investors, the people who created it) may decide that giving a small amount away for free to a lot of different people may actually make them money over the long term, if it means more people start using the coin and it therefore builds a higher value.

These free money websites are known as 'facuets'. Qoinpro, which I've included a banner for on the right, is my personal favourite as you just need to sign up for an account and they will give you a range of different digital currencies (including Bitcoin) for free every day without you even needing to go back to their site all the time.

Trading and Market Making

If you already own some digital currency then a popular way to try to earn more is through day trading and market making. If you have experience of any other kind of day trading, especially forex, then you will probably find that trading alt coins is basically the same. You can try to ride trends, perform technical analysis to get market insights, or base your trading decisions on the important news of the day.

Market making is when you post offers slightly off the market price, effectively 'making a market' which was too thin previously to satisfy the needs of regular users. The difference between the price you offer and the actual market price is the profit you make for providing this market making service.

My favourite site for trading is Cryptsy, but there are plenty of others to choose between.

Digital Currency Investments

If you have some money to invest, but you don't want to be sat at your computer all day analysing every little price movement, then there are plenty of options for you too. There are loads of sites around now where you can invest money - in either fiat money or digital currency - and take your profits in Bitcoin or some other alt coin. There are trading and mining funds, virtual shares, interest paying exchanges, and probably a lot more besides. I couldn't possibly list them all here, but I have included a few links for you to check out below:

Sell Stuff - Digital Currency Marketplaces

As the digital currency economy develops, it is becoming more and more like the regular fiat money economy. So, just as you may decide to sell a few things through eBay if you want to make yourself a bit of extra cash in your national fiat currency, you can also sell things over the internet for Bitcoin or for other digital currencies. See below for a list of just some of the peer to peer marketplaces that can help you do this.

OpenBazaarOpenBazaar is an open source project to create a decentralized network for commerce online, using Bitcoin, that has no fees and cannot be censored.

CryptothriftBitcoin, Litecoin, Primecoin and Feathercoin auction site with automated escrow.

Devtome - Write and Get Paid in Devcoins

If you are a writer like me and the other members of the community here at Hubpages, then you will find plenty of opportunities to put your talents to work earning Bitcoins. You can find writing jobs for BTC on the freelance jobs boards I mentioned above, or you can work for websites like Bitscan who are always looking for writers.

Personally, however, I think that the best opportunity to earn digital currency by writing is through Devtome. Devtome is the official wiki of the Devcoin project, which is a cryptocurrency designed to support open source developers and creative commons media producers. If you are accepted as a Devtome writer (you have to provide a sample of your work when you apply to help prevent spammers) you will earn a proportion of the newly generated Devcoins based on the word count of your published content on the site.

Claiming Bounties

Another way to earn is through claiming bounties. A bounty is simply a reward offered to anybody who can complete a given task. Usually they are offered to open source software developers who can fix a bug in the code for a coin, develop a new service, or provide an improved piece of code for a certain function. But there are also bounties out there for various other tasks which non-programmers could have a go at. Sometimes you can arrange with the person offering the bounty to work on it in advance. but usually the bounty is simply paid to the first person to submit a successful solution.

Most coins have at least one bounty running, and you should be able to find them for each coin with a quick google search. Perhaps the widest range of bounties that could be claimed by non-programmers comes from Devcoin, which reserves some of its newly generated coins specifically for paying bounties to support open source and creative commons projects.

The good thing about bitcoins is that the buy in is low. There is no other (to my knowledge) commodity that can be invested in as economically as BTC. It's a good way to get your feet wet!

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matt 21 months ago

Tired of earning hard to get satoshi on faucets and don't want to take the risk on gambling for a chance at quick earnings? well heres a site to do all your shopping at and in the process you earn BITS! just type in your wallet address, pick the store you want to shop at and earn bits just for buying things you were going to buy in the first place. Don't forget black friday is coming soon and with the combination of no taxes, cash rewards on credit cards, and now bitcoin rebates you could be saving some serious money!

Hi all this really is an awesome site. I have been using it for over 6 months now and have always been paid every ten mins as promised. If anyone needs help or advice setting up a scrypt cc account feel free to ask and I will be happy to help.

If you are going to join scrypt cc you can use my link below, for good rates and good profits as scrypt cc is the best cloud mining site around.

That doesn't seem right to me, I'm not sure if you did it right or wrong though - it depends on how much you paid for the machine, what its electricity consumption is and how much you pay for electricity and of course what the value of Bitcoin will be during the period you own it.

SpaceShanty 3 years agofrom United Kingdom

Thanks for your reply, looking at the calculator, even using a 50GH machine it could more than 10,000 days to get a ROI on the equipment, unless I did it wrong?

Author

Dean Walsh 3 years agofrom Birmingham, England

Its not worth it for a regular computer, but it is, or at least should be, profitable using the right hardware. Obviously you aren't going to make a fortune from a £20-30 USB miner, but it is a start and you can build up a number of them in a USB hub. The best plan is actually to plug them into something like a Raspberry Pi which you can leave on 24/7 with minimal electricity costs (check this out for a pre-configured operating system to put onto your pi for mining: http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=minepeon), although you can also plug them into your personal computer to run just whilst you are using it. You can estimate what you'll get reasonably accurately using a free mining profit calculator - just put the specs of the miner and the amount you are charged for electricity in on a site like this: http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ and it will tell you how much you should expect to make per day and when you are most likely to break even on your expenses.

SpaceShanty 3 years agofrom United Kingdom

Hi, Thanks for the excellent Hub!

I have looked in to Bitcoin mining before but understood (at the time) that, as you said the equipment and power to mine bitcoins didn't really make it worth it. Has that changed now? I mean how much can you earn running a cheap USB 2 GH miner?

Thanks

Author

Dean Walsh 3 years agofrom Birmingham, England

That's a great question Susi10, thanks - there are actually quite a few places you can spend Bitcoin now, if you know where to look. Overstock.com is probably the biggest retailer to accept them directly. You can also use a service like Brawker.com which lets you pay for purchases from major internet stores like Amazon and eBay in Bitcoin and get an 8% discount for doing so (although it can take a bit of time to complete a purchase with them). Alternatively you can browse through over 9000 other retailers here: https://spendbitcoins.co.uk/ or try here: http://bitscan.com/directory/searchlocations/busin... Happy shopping, and good luck with the mining!

John Coviello 3 years agofrom New Jersey

Very interesting information. Not something many people know about. Something many looking to make money online will find useful. Thanks for sharing this!

Susan W 3 years agofrom The British Isles, Europe

Interesting hub, electronician and I have enjoyed reading it. New digital currencies such as Bitcoin are really starting to pick up now. They still seem to be a little sci-fi for me but it just shows how quickly crypto-currency is gaining popularity. Everything is going tech these days, even banking and money. Earning bitcoins doesn't seem too difficult, I might try mining to earn some extra money. I just have one question, where exactly can we use the bitcoins since most online retailers don't accept it yet? Thanks! Voted up and shared.